Think about it. If roughly one-third of leaders have a fatal flaw and you are sitting in a management meeting, look to your right and then to your left. As the old joke goes, if in your opinion, neither of these two colleagues has a really serious weakness, then the laws of statistics suggest that you do.

You have heard the concept that “actions speak louder than words.” What does it mean? It means there's often a difference between the language people speak and the values they espouse – or a difference between what they say and what they actually are if you watch their actions. Does your walk talk?

donhornsby's insight:

As it pertains to this principle, “Don’t say it if you’re not going to do it.” And, by all means, if you say it, “DO IT!” This is the essence of integrity.

Here you must challenge your teams thinking, asking probing questions and trying to get them to think differently in order to find a solution that they can believe in. You need to ask them what they need to succeed, rather than why they think things are not possible. You need to get them into a can-do mindset, rather than a can't do mindset, which can help them with even the most difficult of challenges.

If ever there was a time when one person could singlehandedly create the Next Big Thing, it's long gone. Now, collaboration and connection is king, which on the surface makes sense—the more ideas we can share with each other, the faster we'll arrive at something important. Except, new experiments suggest, that intuition is wrong: Having everyone's ideas on the table all at once can actually stifle innovation.

In other words, being too connected could lead to a kind of cultural lock-in, where societies find something that works OK and stick with it, oblivious to the existence of other ideas that could improve their fate. Connection isn't everything; the pattern of connection matters too.

Most people go through life not really getting any smarter. Why? They simply won't do the work required.

It's easy to come home, sit on the couch, watch TV, and zone out until bedtime rolls around. But that's not going to help you get smarter.

Sure, you can go into the office the next day and discuss the details of last night's episode of Mad Men or Game of Thrones. And yes, you know what happened on Survivor. But that's not knowledge accumulation; that's a mind-numbing sedative.

You can acquire knowledge if you want it. In fact, there is a simple formula, which if followed is almost certain to make you smarter over time. Simple but not easy.

It involves a lot of hard work.

We'll call it the Buffett formula, named after Warren Buffett and his longtime business partner at Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger. These two are an extraordinary combination of minds. They are also learning machines.

It's important to think about the opportunity cost of this hour. On one hand, you can check Twitter, read some online news, and reply to a few emails while pretending to finish the memo that is supposed to be the focus of your attention. On the other hand, you can dedicate the time to improving yourself. In the short term, you're better off with the dopamine-laced rush of email and Twitter while multitasking. In the long term, the investment in learning something new and improving yourself goes further.

“Who’s my most valuable client?” And he decided it was himself. So he decided to sell himself an hour each day. He did it early in the morning, working on these construction projects and real estate deals. Everybody should do this, be the client, and then work for other people, too, and sell yourself an hour a day.

Your employees depend on you to lead them through a challenging time -- here's how to lead effectively following a company-wide red alert.

donhornsby's insight:

When a major issue occurs at your company, it's a true test of leadership. Will you kick into action, or will you allow the stress of the situation to get the best of you? The bottom line is this: A company crisis is when your employees need you most. They need to know that you care, that you truly believe that everything will be okay and that they can depend on you.

No matter how you look at your business, a culture of fear is never healthy or sustainable. In such an environment, people do limited work, are not fully engaged, look for other jobs and ultimately leave, spreading poor word of mouth about your employment brand. Simply asking your people the right questions and gaining honest feedback—even if it is anonymous—can expose critical opportunities for cultural, organizational, people and business growth.

Has your boss stopped returning your calls? Have they stopped asking you for your opinion or introducing you to new clients? It's time to consider the possibility that you're being frozen out from above. Here are some surefire signs that you've fallen out of favor--and, on the positive side, what you can do about them.

Here’s the bottom line: While you shouldn’t believe everything you hear about mindfulness, there are, indeed, payoffs from a meditation habit. In fact, the research also shows that more hours of meditation you put in over your lifetime, the better the results on the four fronts we’ve described. Think of mindfulness as a way to enhance certain kinds of mental fitness, just as regular workouts at the gym build physical fitness.

People who are constantly trying to communicate how busy and stressed they are not trying to send you a message about their schedule, they are trying to highlight how important and needed they are. This can also come out as being overly critical: people who always want to point out what you’re doing wrong want to place themselves in a position of authority, even if they don’t have one.

Any conversation at work where you are asking someone for something is a form of negotiation. Effective managers and leaders use the principles of positive persuasion to get what they need and strengthen relationships in the process.

donhornsby's insight:

This is a big, important topic they mostly don’t teach in school. Those who manage to consistently get what they want and need in the best interests of a business and their team understand and apply these approaches. Everyone can develop the skills essential to master positive persuasion. Step one: stop arguing and start thinking about the person on the other side of your request. Build from there.

I know what power is, you say. It’s force, money, influence, freedom, government. Let me ask some questions with the purpose of making you ponder a bit longer about power rather than come up with an answer. I am testing your ideas on power to nudge you on a path of a personal reflection, as the concept of power is a deeply personal, almost primal notion built on our own life experiences.

donhornsby's insight:

Leaders who have dropped the notion of "power over" keep the idea of building "power with" alive in the light of ongoing inquiry, a search that never crystallizes into dogmatism, inflexibility and irrationality of the old wives’ tale. This way profound possibilities might start sliding into place.

Today, we’re going to explore four actionable steps you can take in order to train your mind to enhance your levels charisma, helping you to become the person you want to be in the life that you want to live.

There’s a lot of pain that comes with leadership. Struggles no one else ever sees. Betrayals by coworkers and friends. Business failures. And so much more. Which is why you need to be thankful for the things that you have each day.

There is often a learning curve whenever you enact change, so give yourself time to adopt these strategies. Remember, there are six areas that help build more neuroplasticity, and focusing on one at a time is the best way to ensure you devote the necessary time so it becomes a part of your life.

Do you wake up each morning hell-bent on making someone at work miserable? Do you intentionally ignore people or purposely avoid giving them what they need to succeed? Are you totally oblivious to the affect your leadership has on those you lead? Sit in on one of my courses on self leadership and you might be surprised how many employees are convinced you do.

donhornsby's insight:

Your leadership is crucial to your people’s success, but it’s only one side of the leadership coin. The other side of the coin is self-leadership. These days of disruption and uncertainty demand developing new just-in-time strategies. Those strategies depend on successfully developing the proactive self-leadership skills and self-reliance of your individual contributors

Tapping Into Monastic Curiosity Many of the things I do are motivated by curiosity. I get interested in something and set off to find out more about it. The leaders who inspire me are curious. They want to find out how far or fast we can go and what is going to happen next. There …

donhornsby's insight:

Curiosity may inspire us to move further out into the world. It could draw us toward exploring our true selves. We may pursue what makes us curious in a classroom or an office or a monastery. I wonder where curiosity might take us next.

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